No relation, though I have seen many popular MUD sites littered with hate to/from 'Locke'.. license disputes?

Basically, yes. He claims credit for other people's work, even going so far as to strip out copyright notices and replace them with his own, and he argues tirelessly about why licences shouldn't apply to him. But at the same time he demands that other people follow his licence (which he retroactively changes from year to year) regardless of whether or not they're actually using "his" code.

He's been banned from several mud sites, and even from Wikipedia, where he used multiple accounts to insert himself into the history of various successful muds as the source of their code (or at least the inspiration for their games). He did this to me as well, claiming his code was "influential in the design of Godwars and Godwars2", then making up fictitious quotes attributed to me to try and back up his claim.

He didn't stop at muds, though. He also claims Final Fantasy and Fallout 3 named characters after him, that The Urbz: Sims in the City was based on his demo, that he was involved in Team Fortress 2, that he has a patent pending for cancer detection software, that he gave BP the solution to the oil crisis, etc, etc. Crat has an amusing picture with a few quotes from him, which I can't find now (but I'm sure he'll post a link). However here are a few other quotes to give you an idea:

"I invented YouTube"

"I did not invent the Hummer H3, I just influenced its design."

"I fixed a lot of PayPal…I personally fixed a lot of it"

"I named Microsoft Vista"

"I helped with a few features of Google search, and a few features of Mozilla Firefox"

"I also suggested auto-complete for Linux Kernel"

"My ideas are part of every major company on the west coast"

Joseph Locke said:

Anyway, he couldn't have invented Steam. I did. :cool:

Steam was developed by Valve, who are based in Washington, on the west coast ;)

Steam was developed by Valve, who are based in Washington, on the west coast ;)

<<–// Place of residence: Seattle-WA/Bellingham-WA, USA

Hey, we're around the same area! :p

The valve co-owner was also "producer" for the first three Microsoft Windows releases? How Valve got the cash to start up with another employee from Microsoft.

More gaming companies could take some lessons from Valve. I think Valve is the only company I've never really had any issues with how they handle their customers or their business practices. At least when it comes to gaming companies.

I don't support micro-transaction gaming. If I buy a game, I want to buy the complete game in one shebang and get the value I expect from it (Skyrim, for example). Not pay $20 for a one-trick indie pony that winds up with 10 DLCs at $5 a pop every time some developer decides to go back and add some tiny little change to the game. (Dungeon Defenders, Magicka, etc.)

I suspect you wouldn't have any problem if that same skyrim DLC cost 50 cents each for 10 different packages. Coming out to a total of 6 dollars. The problem with DLC isn't some betrayal of idea. It's that it's usually overpriced. Like 25 dollars for a 0.5% new content added to the game. Unfortunately, it takes vigilance on the gamers part to know if it's worth the buy, but back in the day that same vigilance was required when purchasing the game itself. There was very few resources to know which games were flops and which were good. We ended up buying a lot of full games that were crappy for the full price. It's easy to look back at the past and characterize it as the "good old days," but I don't believe it's true. Especially with regard to early game industry.

I have no issue paying $20 for a game and $40 for DLC if I get a game that is comparable to one that cost $60 in the first place. Somebody who feels otherwise is behaving irrationally.

Furthermore, if I pay just $20, and find out I don't like it, I've only paid $20, not $40, and I have no obligation to buy the extra content.

So, in fact, games that let you buy "episodes" piece-by-piece give you more flexibility as a purchaser than ones that force you to buy everything at once; assuming, of course, that the total amounts spent are comparable.

This is why the growing trend of MMO's to offer free-to-pay versions is both good and bad.

On the plus side, it means you can try the game and see if you like it enough to fork out the box price + a monthly fee. On the minus side, the "free" version is usually so heavily limited that it isn't all that much fun and may scare folks away because of that.

The bigger negative though, is the tendancy to start selling items/gear/whatever that makes the game easier for those with bigger wallets. I'm sure some of you don't care, or don't care if it isn't a PvP-centric game, but it takes away yet another option from those who don't have much money in real life.

Back in the days of Everquest and Ultima Online, it was possible for someone to improve their self-worth (strictly in their own minds) by playing the game with enough skill to be at the top of the heap. Sure, that won't buy you a cup of coffee… but it allows one to briefly forget the fact that they're poor and have to drink tap water instead of mocha latte. By providing DLC that makes it easier to play and often makes it impossible to play without forking out the cash, you remind them yet again, that they are second class citizens.

So, while it's nice to let people without much time pay cash to stay competitive, it's not so nice for those who used to be good players that cannot compete against the wallet.

It's interesting you mention everquest, because I think everquest had the biggest black market pay-to-perk experience ever. I knew some people who made pretty good money on the side just selling in-game material. So in that regard, I think it was possible to acquire more power in everquest with real money than perhaps many of these pay-to-perk games since. I'll take it one step further, maybe it's just lessons learned from everquest indeed.

You could always take a shortcut by buying stuff, but the option to do it without spending money was always there. In modern free-to-pay games, it often isn't POSSIBLE to attain items or goals without forking out the cash.

Using Everquest 2 as an example, the best looking (most intricate) furniture in the game is only available from their cash shop. You can spend years leveling a carpenter to level 90, gain every recipe there is, get all the ultra-rare materials to build it, and the model you end up with is inferior to the one somebody can spend $10 to buy.

I only marginally dislike being able to use your wallet instead of your in-game skills to bypass content, but I totally hate the idea that for-purchase items are equal to, or superior to, the best player-crafted items in the game.

On one hand you have a free to play game that is limited, but allows you to do some things for free…

then you have everquest, where you do have to fork out money to access anything.

Furthermore, everquest, as I mentioned before, had the ultimate black market for acquiring items of power for RL coin. It was actually worse, because you couldn't be sure if someone earned or bought these items. Unlike modern pay-to-perk games where the items are almost always designated as bought. That's a huge social difference.

For those reasons, I don't really view everquest as any type of positive influence on the pay-to-perk atmosphere.